Mastercard Engage Enables Technology Partners to Accelerate Deployment of Digital Solutions in Middle East and Africa

Accelerating the growth of the digital payments ecosystem in the UAE, Mastercard, a leading technology company in the global payments industry, recently launched the Middle East and Africa (MEA)’s inaugural Mastercard Engage Forum. Mastercard Engage is a dedicated global platform that connects the company’s customers with technology partners and service providers to help them deploy the latest digital solutions in a fast and cost effective way.

As a concrete way of educating the digital partner community, Mastercard launched the series of global and regional forums for registered technology service providers such as digital wallet providers in March 2018. The Mastercard Engage Forum, held in Dubai, saw the attendance of 32 participants from 25 technology companies across the MEA region.

In just over one year, the MEA region has doubled the number of listed partners who have relevant digital capabilities, with many more currently completing the registration process. These capabilities include deploying digital wallets (Masterpass) for faster and superior eCommerce payment, tokenization services to make digital transactions more secure, and in-store payments via mobile using contactless and QR technology.

Through a series of product trainings and market-specific discussions, the forum empowered technology partners and digital service providers with the knowledge and insights required for the adoption and deployment of global interoperable Mastercard-proven solutions, to achieve scale and remain relevant.

“In today’s hyper-connected world, consumers seek more innovative ways to make fast, convenient and secure payments. This has opened up a whole new world of business opportunities for technology companies and created an unprecedented need to consistently deliver on our customers’ expectations, while keeping the consumer experience at the heart of everything we do. Our Mastercard Engage platform allows our customers to identify the right resources and partners to integrate new and innovative payment technologies within their offerings, and cater to the evolving needs of their consumers,” said Driss Belemlih, Senior Vice President, Customer Delivery, MEA, Mastercard.

In addition to product trainings, Mastercard highlighted its sales and delivery models and best practices on information security, enabling participating companies to better integrate with Mastercard and, therefore, accelerate the deployment of digital solutions to market.

As such, when Mastercard customers - issuers, merchants, and IoT (Internet of Things) device manufacturers - work with these Engage listed vendors, it eliminates the need for them to experiment with unfamiliar technologies on their own, reduces the risk of troubleshooting during projects and increases their speed to market.

“Mastercard is pioneering innovative technologies to revolutionize the cashless payment ecosystem in the region in response to the evolving needs of consumers. However, in order to scale these solutions and ensure they deliver the desired value, various industry players need to work together and ensure their successful implementation. Through the Mastercard Engage platform, we are able to give velocity to the pace of change in our marketplace by connecting our customers with the right fintech partners and service providers,” said Gaurang Shah, Senior Vice President, Product Management, Digital Payments & Labs, MEA, Mastercard.